CYBERSAFARI: Lesson One - Ignore those
Engineers.

The "Zippy Cybersafari to Africa" aka Cyber
Safari is a good example of what happens when the engineers take over and
make a complete mess of things, the artists and producers end up taking
the blame for what should be by rights, their artistic prerogative. In
fact, if engineers ruled the world nobody would dare walk through a door
for fear of getting nailed to a cross, or fly airplanes for want of a slide
rule.

What should have been a simple demonstration
of interactivity turned into all manner of things as the Unity 95 crew
promised everybody the world, including the United Nations. I too succumbed
to the eager calls for "education, communication and conflict resolution"
and put my arse online for a project that could have turned into something
really substantial if only it weren't hamstrung by the need for voluntary
donations of time, energy and used technology.

The Modems for Africa project, for instance
while a good idea, didn't have any legs as far as the San Francisco computer
fraternity was concerned, and while we publicised the cause, networked
and tried hard to seem like we were doing something constructive and dare
one say "politically correct" the real moral that keeps buzzing around
my head as I write these words today is this one "for any project to truly
succeed, you have to own it yourself, have a special stake in its success
and play a central role crucial in determining its future."

All I could muster then was a narrow focus
on the future of communication. It just wasn't good enough to have interactivity,
or to put the Western Cape Schools Network in touch with Unesco and the
Parallel University, a project created by Fraser Clark which didn't even
have money to print up pamphlets let alone employ a professional like me.
So like most volunteer cultural workers I was left dependent upon the graft
of huge techno corporations like Bell and AT&T who all consumed an
enormous amount of time and energy, promised to donate us the world, including
money, but never pulled through in the end.

The only corporates which actually came through
for either Unity 95 or the Zippy Cybersafari to Africa were the PictureTel
Corp, the manufacturers of the video conferencing system, and Telkom, a
South African parastatel which donated a technician and the cost of installing
an ISDN line on the Cape Town side.

Then there was a fireman by the name of Mr
Manning, who came up with some of his own hard-earned dough to pay for
the actual cost of the link which ticked over in units like any normal
telephone conversation would, in return I was sworn to include a petition
to stop the War in Yugoslavia, and the result turned into something of
a WORLD PEACE NOW freak show, what with bongo playing "earthlings" chanting
mantras alongside a Tibetan Monk, and well, the rest is history - at least
the War in the Balkans stopped, and we have something of a world record.

Which is why I say, leave interactive video
art to the artists and stay clear of the engineers at all costs, in fact
for all the promises made and broken, the ones that stood steadfast were
usually of the most mundane or, esoteric sort. For example we knew we were
going to end up with an interactive something and that's precisely what
we got, an interactive performance, that included a demonstration of the
first use of the technology between the two continents.

The timing precluded anything like an intelligent
debate over "the issues", since by the time anybody had arrived at the
Fort Mason Centre, the whole thing had been postponed, and our "invited
guests" sitting in Cape Town, had then left. What we had then was the After-party
to the scheduled "debate" interacting with the new late arrivals
on the San Francisco End, while a scheduled "African Dawn, along with the
Venusians" was ditched after the grass smoking incident in which a member
of the public (actually a friend of Clark's) lit up a big fat one in front
of television cameras and interacted with what turned out to be one fat
party happening in Cape Town...sorry.

Mr Manning, then tried to put an end to the
show, and the two hours of interactive video art suddenly turned into one.

Enough said, but for those of you who still
think history is made via polite panel discussions, or that peace happens
because of news readers wearing pink cravats, here is that UNITY 95 manifesto.
It sort of reads like an old hokey folk dance and has a nice ting to it
even after all these years:

Unity Foundation in partnership
with the Parallel University is producing an international video conference
from San Francisco, USA to Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa on
Saturday June 24, 1995 at 2:00-3:00 pm PST and 10:00-11:00 pm PST. This
intercontinental video conference between America and Africa called the
Cyber Safari will take place at Unity 95, an international culture and
technology exposition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding
of the United Nations in San Francisco. This unique exposition has been
designed to feature presentations of international culture and showcase
new technologies employed for education, communication and conflict resolution.

The "Cyber Safari" interactive
video conference will bring together citizens, educators and engineers
in San Francisco and South Africa to discuss how today's global communications
systems can be used to advance education, conflict resolution and social
development. Unity Foundation and Parallel University are working with
PictureTel Corporation and Silicon Graphics, who are donating the use of
their video conferencing equipment both in San Francisco and South Africa.
High speed ISDN lines and local phone service from Pacific Bell and Telcom
South Africa are being arranged to make the local digital signal connection.
International digital signal services from AT&T will connect this interactive
video bridge between America and Africa. In addition to the interactive
video conference, on-line computers will be accessible throughout the 12
hour exposition, demonstrating how global communications are now available
by a local call to the internet.

Unity Foundation and the Parallel
University are working with the UNESCO association, USA and the Western
Cape Schools Network, SA, to use this video conference to build awareness
of how citizens in developed and developing countries can use telecommunication
services to exchange information, resources and collaborate in areas of
mutual interest. One project that will be promoted is the "Modems for Africa"
program of the Parallel University. This program will begin by collecting
used computers and modems in the United States and shipping them to the
Western Cape Schools Network in South Africa. This equipment will help
provide Internet access to South African schools that can not afford the
initial expense of this equipment. The video conference will also discuss
broader issues of international co-operation to wire Africa in the world,
such as reports from the recent African Regional Symposium on Telematics
for Development conference and AT&T's Africa One project to ring the
continent with the region's first high-capacity digital undersea fiber-optic
network.

The Cyber Safari video conference
will play a key role at the Unity 95 international culture and technology
exposition. This unique event will showcase how citizens, educators, cultural
workers and communications companies are working together to promote international
co-operation and social development. This interactive Indaba (African-style
community meeting) will put the call out for a planetary crew to collect
many modems for African schools and embrace the spirit of the United Nations.

[Which is pretty much what happens when you
take a simple idea like interactivity or communication, add a couple of
engineers and attach the whole thing to a bureacracy like UNESCO. One wonders
how humankind managed to survive, for so long?]